This books covers the history of the Nile Valley from Nubia to the Mediterranean, during the period from the earliest hominid settlement, around 700,000 BC to the beginnings of dynastic Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BC.

The author, Béatrix Midant-Reynes, is Head of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Toulouse (Centre d’Anthropologie, Université Paul Sabatier). She is also editor of Archéonil (a journal dedicated to the study of prehistoric Egypt and Nubia) and Director of the excavations at the Predynastic site of Adaïma (on behalf of IFAO). In 1986 she was Humbolt Stipendiatin in Staatliche Sammlung Ágyptischer Kunst’ in Munich.

The translator, Ian Shaw, is lecturer in Egyptian archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He is the author of Ancient Egyptian Warfare and Weapons (1991), co-author of The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (with Nicholson, 1995) and co-editor of The Dictionary of Archaeology (with Jameson: Blackwell, 1998) and Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology (with Nicholson, 1999). He also translated Nicolas Grimal’s A History of Ancient Egypt (Blackwell, 1992).